ABSTRACT
Architecture is but a part of the built environment. Inside a building, its parts become our whole multi-sensory environment; from outside it’s only part of our visual surroundings. We rarely experience larger buildings as architectural objects, but where we do, it’s usually because they aren’t part of their context but dominate it. This makes them photogenic, and thus favourite subjects for architectural magazines. But it also makes them crystallized monologues with no concern for the needs of people or place. Thinking about users requires a different approach: it means thinking of buildings as spaces, their outsides as boundaries to spaces. Thinking about people as individuals, means recognizing they need houses for the soul, not boxes for the body. Do you know anyone who is just a feelingless item needing packaging? I don’t. They don’t exist.
